


Liar

by china_doll



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abusive Parents, Abusive Relationships, Best Friends, Bisexual Female Character, British Character, F/F, F/M, French Aunt, I Don't Even Know, I Made Myself Cry, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Inventor, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Character of Color, London, New York City, Paris - Freeform, Soft Character(s), Strong Female Characters, Taylor Swift songs, Writer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 21:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21215663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/china_doll/pseuds/china_doll
Summary: Henrietta Amelia Kennedy is born on the twenty-second of June to two parents who were expecting a boy, and never again did they expect her to meet their expectations.Good thing then that she exceeded every single one of them.





	Liar

She sighed, worn out from years of fighting, and knew that she must start writing. If she didn’t write, write like she used to, like she had something to prove, like she still has something to prove, then no one would ever know the full truth. No one but Emily, Bear and herself would ever know.

She made her way through the library, as if in a trance, her hands tracing the worn spines of all the worlds that she’d explored, built from the ground up, and in some cases, hadn’t managed to save from catastrophes that she had prevented in the real world.

She reached her worn out and cherished cherry wood bureau, and pulled out the matching chair, lost in the memories of the friends she’d written about, coaxed onto the paper and out of her head, the friends that she’d cried over more than she cared to admit as she wrote out their own lives, happy whenever she did as then, she could at least control something, even if it was only on paper and was only a temporary escape. She sat down and turned on the trusty lamp, that had never managed to disappoint her, with the flick of a switch and pulled a blank notebook and a pencil towards herself.

It was time to write, and Lia Kennedy was ready.

~~

The Kennedy’s were a well-to-do family who had no time for mistakes, which was common within the circles of society that they moved within in New York. The couple had married in their early thirties, drawing attention from every corner of the country as Arthur, the CEO of the rapidly expanding Kennedy Automotors married the well-known socialite Clara Nelson, a New Yorker who could easily rival Marilyn Monroe if she so desired.

But they were both determined to give Arthur the heir he deserved to carry on his legacy with his car company. And so, when Clara fell pregnant, six years after their marriage, they were both ecstatic. Clara retired from high society as soon as she discovered, so as to carefully carry the son that would fulfil his father’s legacy.

The whole of New York was ablaze with interest, speculating every about the hospital the baby would be born in, to what Clara’s diet was to keep healthy whilst carrying the heir of the Kennedy fortune. Close friends knew that the couple had already prepared a beautiful set of rooms for their little boy, complete with toy cars and mechanical details in every little nook and cranny. It was the ideal space to raise a little boy into the model image of his father.

The day finally came, the baby was late by about a week, but Clara seemed to think that her little boy was just spending a little more time hiding due to stage fright. Of course, when Henrietta Amelia Kennedy entered the world screaming, screaming with an unknown, a yet undiscovered purpose.

“It’s a girl!” The nurses smiled and wrapped her in a little cloth before handing the newborn girl to her mother, this, however, didn’t stop the cries. Clara was, by this point, so full of drugs that she just held the baby until it was taken away, not attached, but indifferent.

Arthur, on the other, was not full of painkillers when the nurse came up to him in the waiting room and told him that he had a healthy baby girl. If he were to reflect on this moment, he would probably wish that he could have been pumped full of painkillers before receiving the news.

“A girl?” He asked, in pure shock.

“Yes, sir.” The nurse replied quietly, not sure of his reaction.

“Are you quite sure?” He questioned, looking to his closest friend sitting next to him, silently urging him to question the nurse as well.

“It was meant to be a boy,” Wright uttered in astonishment, knowing that the birth of a girl is bad for both the company and his friend.

The nurse just smiled as she reiterated that the baby is in fact, a girl, before excusing herself.

~~

A few days later found the new family back at their new mansion, built especially for raising their little boy. The maids all curtsied as Ma’am and Sir returned with Wright and the coveted heir, and the baby carrier was thrust into the waiting arms of the butler and the wet nurse.

The butler, Lee, took the baby carrier with a smile and asked Sir if the young sir is healthy. Sir justs laughs and walked off to his office with Wright, confusing all the staff. It’s not until later that the staff find out the reason for Sir’s behaviour.

~~

The staff and Lee soon fell into a reasonable routine, after having discovered that the long-expected young sir was, in fact, a young miss.

Ma’am and Sir vehemently refused to see her.

Instead, they threw themselves into society and work respectively.

The maids were constantly atwitter, confused and on edge at their employers' behaviour. It didn’t take long for the rest of New York to find out that the highly anticipated Kennedy heir was a _girl_.

Clara’s friends took to glancing at her pityingly across gala ballrooms, whilst the less friendly socialites snickered behind her back and boasted amongst themselves about how they would never have disappointed such a deserving man as _Arthur Kennedy_. Wright spent long nights with the man himself at the local bars, talking and adjusting their plans to make the company’s future more secure.

During this time, Henrietta continued to grow at an astonishing rate. She was never quiet, always babbling to herself and by nine months, she was already tottering around the nursery without the help of Lee. And, not two weeks afterwards, he found her out of her cot after coming in to wake her up.

“Young miss,” he had sighed, smiling a little while picking her up. “How on earth did you manage to do that?”

She looked up at him and babbled away, giggling a little. He smiled back, before starting his daily routine- he didn’t think of this as part of his job as Henrietta always managed to make it a pleasurable and fulfilling experience.

~~

At just over a year old, Henrietta said her first word. ‘Lee’, she said one day whilst playing in the nursery, stopping and pointing out of the window at something.

“That’s right, young miss. I’m Lee.”

The rest of the day, the man didn’t stop smiling. Not even when he realised that she was pointing at Ma’am and Sir who were walking up the front steps, having just returned from the hospital.

But, he stopped smiling the next day when he heard why the couple went to the hospital.

“This is all your fault!”, Lee heard Sir shout at Ma’am from inside his office.

“I’m sorry!” He listened to Ma’am’s reply, distress colouring her normally confident and indifferent voice. “It’s _her_ fault. She’s the one that did the damage!”

“I know, and now she’s made sure that we can’t even _try_ to fix the damage she’s done to our plans.” Sir forced out, spitting the sentence out like a mouthful of cheap wine.

Lee could hear Ma’am’s sobs from the hallway, through the thick walls and mahogany panelling. And from that moment, he vowed to protect the young miss from whatever he can.

~~

Henrietta learnt to speak fast, grasping the concepts and sentence patterns faster than the average toddler. She never stopped talking, even when she’s asleep she mumbled to herself.

She walked around the nursery, playing by herself and making up her own dramas, giving her toys voices and personalities of their own.

She loved talking with others, especially with Lee. Her vocabulary expanded rapidly, but she used three words the most.

‘Lee, focus, look.”

_Lee, look at me. Everyone stop, look at me._

_Someone_ look _at me._

The young miss continued to grow worryingly fast.

By age 3, she had finished reading the books in the nursery before Lee has realised that she’s started reading at all. He made sure to restock the library with a wider range of age-appropriate books. Henrietta continued to devour books like oxygen, abandoning everything else in her nursery.

Once she’d read all the children's books that Lee could provide, she started writing her own. She drew scenes from her favourite books. And then, she started taking apart her toys, and anything she could get her hands on to make her favourite characters come to life. She started small, with the old wooden toy cars, making them into better models, making them more visually appealing, more streamlined.

She coloured the cars in, numbered them and raced them down a makeshift ramp of books. She wrote about the cars, made them and her other creations her own, not just the nursery’s.

~~

One night, as Lee tucked her in, she turned to him, innocent eyes wide.

“Lee?”

“Yes, young miss?”

“Am I different?” She asked him, voice soft as if she was speaking of a taboo topic.

“No, young miss. You’re not different.” He replied, trying not to let the shock show in his voice. “Why would you think that?”

“Ma’am’s friends always call me interesting and quaint.” She responded, thoughtful and hesitant. “I think they mean for the words to seem nice, but how they say them makes such words seem like insults- like they don’t like me.”

Lee’s heart broke at such an honest confession. He paused for thought before replying, making sure that his anger is under control. How dare such insignificant women cause such grief to manifest in such a small child.

“Young miss, you are not different. You are special. You are wonderful and so intelligent. You just scare them, they’ve never met someone who shines so bright.” He smiled and smoothed down her hair.

“Lee?”

“Yes, young miss?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, young miss.”

Henrietta sighed and frowned thoughtfully. Lee had given her a lot to think about.

“Young miss?”

“Yes?”

“Have I told you the story of the evergreen and the marigold?” He questioned her, knowing full well that he had yet to tell her of it.

“No, but it sounds interesting. I would love to hear it.” She responded, interest slipping into her tired voice.

“Alright.” He smiled and started. “A long time ago, there was a big evergreen tree that grew on the mountainside. All around the tree were marigolds that bloomed every spring without fail.”

He continued on, the young miss engrossed in the story, but by the time he’d finished it, she was out like a light.

~~

Henrietta is five when she’s managed to build her own, functional model automobile. Ever since that night when she’d asked if she was different, Lee had encouraged her and given her all the materials that she wanted, even if it meant a backlash from her parents - but she didn’t need to know that.

When she shows Lee that the model could, in fact, move when you pressed a button on its roof, he gasps. Henrietta looks up at him, sadness drawn across her face.

“Do you not like it? Did I do something wrong?” She asks him, unsure of why such a thing would elicit a gasp from the usually quiet man.

“No, young mistress, I like it very much. I just was not expecting that to happen.” Lee responds, trying to cover his shock with a mask of happiness.

At the praise, she beams and giggles a little. She presses the button again.

“You stay here, young miss,” Lee tells her, smiling down at the happy little girl. “I just have to pop out of the nursery for a short while.”

“Okay, Lee.” She says, smiling back before running over to where the toy had flipped onto its side due to a collision with a table leg.

An hour and a half later finds Henrietta in Sir’s study.

“Am I supposed to believe that you,” Sir says, pointing a finger at Henrietta, “You made this?”

He holds the model in his hand, his face filled with disdain and disgust.

“Yes, Sir.” The young girl responds, her feet dangling off the chair that she sits on in front of Arthur’s imposing desk.

He scoffs and places it in between the two of them, right in the middle of his desk, before glaring at his daughter.

“You say yes, and yet you do not yet know how to make anything as complex, let alone read or write.” He counters, unaware of the prodigy that his daughter has become under his nose.

She opens her mouth to respond, before closing it, pensive.

“I’m right.” He says, smiling at his daughter’s apparent beaten look.

“Sir.” She starts, and he chuckles at her timid little voice.

“Yes?” He asks, wondering how the minx will pull herself out of the hole he has happily dug for her.

“I actually can read.” She continues, unperturbed by her father’s words. “I do believe I recall Lee running to tell you when I first started to read. Of course, I hadn’t really told him that I’d started to read, but that’s mainly because I was only three-”

Henrietta is cut off by her father banging his fist on the table and simultaneously causing the car to fall onto the floor. She stops talking, and instead just looks up at him, unsure of what he will do next.

~~

That night is the first night Henrietta goes to bed with a bruise on her cheek and tears on her face.

As she is being tucked in by Lee, she asks him the same question she started asking since knowing the story was there.

“Lee?”

“Yes, young miss?”

“The evergreen?”

“Alright, young miss. A long time ago, there was a big evergreen tree that grew on the mountainside. All around the tree were marigolds that bloomed every spring without fail.”

It took her longer than normal to get to sleep, she kept crying, even as she heard the story over and over until the soothing voice of Lee and the exhaustion from her emotions caught up with and overcame her.


End file.
